Fever - Couverture souple

Holliday, Geneva

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0767921151 ISBN 13 : 9780767921152

Editeur : Broadway Books, 2006

Synopsis

Book by Holliday Geneva

A propos du livre

Extrait

Geneva

Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies that have jumped headfirst into the sexual-stimulant market are in for some bad news. It seems that there is a new, natural sexual stimulant on the marketplace called Cupid. It's cheap, it's organic, it doesn't require a prescription, and it can be purchased from your neighborhood incense dealer. The makers of Cupid, Roscoe and Jo-Jo Barker of Cambria Heights, Queens--by way of Kingston, Jamaica--say there are no side effects associated with the stimulant, but in order for it to be 100 percent effective, large quantities of water need to be consumed when taking it.

This story and more tonight on the six o'clock news.
I gave news correspondent Sade Baderinwa one last look before I pressed the Off button on the television remote. I would try to remember to watch the news that evening. Not that I had a man to use that Cupid stuff on, but I would one day--sooner than later, I hoped--and it wouldn't hurt to have a little extra ammunition in the bedroom when I finally met that special someone.

I settled myself flat on my back again.

The lights were off and the candles lit, and I even had a little oil burning in a simmering pot on the windowsill. Clean sheets, a little Jean Nate dabbed behind each ear, and Barry White's greatest hits playing in the background.

Eric was out somewhere, and my baby girl, Charlie, was napping in the other room.

I'd been taking care of myself for some time now. I mean after I got pregnant from my ex-husband and that bastard had the nerve to demand that I get an abortion, I vowed that that would be the last time that man got any more of my good loving! And to sock it to him good--I had that baby!

Not that that lowlife son of a superbitch acknowledges her. When I announced I was keeping the baby, he told me that he wasn't going to be involved. He said, "Geneva, if you have this baby, you're having it and raising it on your own!"

I just looked at him and said, "How's that different from the first time around? I was married to your sorry ass when Eric came along, and I raised him on my own!"

Well, she's here now, and I gotta tell you, she drives me crazy, but I can't imagine life without her. She is the second best decision I ever made. Eric Jr. was the first.

Since Charlie's been born, I've been practically sexless. Oh, there's been a little stink finger here and there, a little caressing of the breast, some tongue kissing... but none of the toe-curling booty calls I was used to getting from my ex-husband. So I had to take matters into my own hands, literally! And plus, Crystal and I made a celibacy pact. No more of this senseless sleeping around. We would save ourselves for Mr. Right and stop giving ourselves over to Mr. Right Now!

I learned about ten different ways to pleasure myself, and that alone has kept me from stripping naked and running through the streets like an insane person!

"Right, Mandingo?" I whispered as I turned. Mandingo was waiting patiently beside me. Well oiled, he glistened beneath the candlelight.

"Okay, baby, I'm almost ready," I whispered as I stretched my body alongside Mandingo's and slowly began to caress my nipples. "Ohhh," I moaned, then glanced over at Mandingo and said, "You should be doing this for me, you know?"

I chuckled as I moved my hand up to the soft mound of flesh beneath my chin. There I allowed my fingers to feather-stroke my skin.

That really turned me on.

"Mmmmm," I groaned, already feeling moist between my legs. "I'm going to make it nice and wet for you, sweetie," I told Mandingo, even though I was thinking about the mocha-colored cutie who frequents the diner where I waitress.

He always sits at my station, always orders a decaf, two slices of whole-wheat toast, followed by a glass of orange juice. He reads The New York Times while he's eating, and when he's done, he leaves me a $5.00 tip, even though his meal costs only $3.50.

I like to pretend that he comes there just to see me, even though he doesn't say much more than "Good morning" and "Thank you" to me.

But, hey, it's nice to dream, right?

Now when I see him coming, I imagine that he's Mos Def and I'm Alicia Keys, and I start humming the melody to "You Don't Know My Name" as I reach for the decaf coffeepot.

And he don't know my name because we don't wear nametags on our uniforms.

Anyway, it's just a fantasy; besides, he don't look too much older than my own son. I probably remind him of his own mother.

Slowly I moved my hand from my breast and pushed it down to my belly and the triangle of black hair below.

My clitoris was already pointed and erect, so when my pinky finger accidentally brushed against it, my body shuddered and my toes curled. "Shiiit," I squeezed out between clenched teeth. "Okay, Mandingo, I'm more than ready for you, baby."

Reaching over, I plucked the little red and white striped plastic penis from the pillow, hit the On switch, and set it to HIGH.

Mandingo pulsated into action; vibrating so hard, he almost slipped from between my sweaty fingers. "Aren't we the eager one," I laughed before I closed my eyes and guided his pointed head to my pleasure place.

Mandingo bucked as I eased him in and out, in and out, in and--

"What's going on, Manny?" I asked, my eyes flying open and my head jerking up off the pillow.
Mandingo's vibrations were becoming spastic.

"C'mon now," I urged, and rolled the tip of his head across my clitoris. The joy was minimal. Mandingo was losing power.

"No, no!" I screamed, and brought Mandingo to eye level. "What? What? It can't be your batteries, I just changed them."

I slapped Mandingo upside his narrow head a few times, but all he did was sputter weakly.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I cried. "Just please don't do this to me, not now!!"

Mandingo coughed, buzzed once, and then died.

"Noooooooooooooooo!"
Crystal

I thought, My life must really be bad, because I was standing in a liquor store on a Saturday afternoon, and it wasn't even two o'clock yet. But I needed some merlot; I had to have some merlot.

Some merlot, Jill Scott, and a hot bath.

"Yes, how can I help you?" The Asian storekeeper stared out at me from behind two sets of glass--the one shielding him and the bifocals that made his eyes look as large as serving platters.

"Um," I said, and pressed my finger against my lip, "what type of merlot do you have?"

He smirked at me. "What kind you like, lady?" he yelled. "I got Australian, California--"

"Um," I cut him off, "you know, I think I'd rather have a Shiraz. You have Shiraz, right?"

He shot me a look that said: What the hell do you know about Shiraz?

His eyebrows climbed to his receding hairline.

"Or, uhm, maybe a petite syrah?"

Now I was just showing off. I knew my wines. He was so used to black people coming into his store and asking for a pint of Bacardi white or E&J that he became tongue-tied when someone my color asked for something different.

"Ohhhh, you got good taste, lady." He grinned, and two rows of blanched teeth appeared. "I got something very, very nice for you," he said, and disappeared through a narrow opening in the wall behind him.

When he returned, he was holding two bottles of wine.

"This from my special collection," he said, then leaned in close to the glass and sputtered, "Reserves."

I blinked at the pale cloud his breath left on the glass and watched as it faded slowly away. "Really?"

"Oh, yes. You see, I'm a big--how you call it?--um, wino!"

I burst into laughter.

"What so funny?"

"You called yourself a wino!"

"So? That's not what you call someone who likes good wine?"

I could barely talk, I was laughing so hard. "N-No," I managed to say.

After setting the bottle down, the shopkeeper threw his hands up in the air. "So what you call it then, since you are such a Miss Smarty-Pants?" he spat.

"A wine connoisseur."

"That a funny word. You just make it up?"

"No."

"Hmm."

He eyed me for a moment before he snatched up the bottles and held them up for me to see again. "Okay, which one you want, Miss Smarty-Pants?"
Back in my apartment I immersed myself in a tub of warm sudsy water. My head was swimming from the wine, and my hands were trying to do things they ought not to have been doing.

"Stop it!" I shrieked, snatching my hands out of the water. Looking down at them, I began to scold them. "You know what happens when you start touching places that have been neglected for too long, don't you?" I used my left one to slap the right one and then vice versa. "Don't you?" I stressed as the suds dripped guiltily away from my fingers.

I hadn't had sex in more than two years. "Whose big idea was it for me to become celibate?" I asked out loud, my voice bouncing off the blue glass tile and back to me.

After my live-in boyfriend turned out to be a drug addict, and the old boyfriend Earl whom I'd turned to to ease my pain turned out to still be the same womanizing creep that he'd promised he no longer was, I decided that I would become celibate.

Well, that promise lasted a little over four months, and by then I was so horny, I started foaming at the mouth every time I saw a good-looking man.

And so rather than continue making a fool out of myself, I pulled out my black book and started calling up exes of mine that would not mind a roll in the hay with no attachments.

That went on for about a good three months before I got tired of giving myself up over and over again. So I just stopped having sex altogether. I changed my number, started chanting, and committed myself to celibacy.

I told myself that the next man that lay on top of me would be my husband--so help me God.

Hey, it worked for Jackée Harry!

So I began masturbating--not that I hadn't before, but two years into my celibacy, it was nearing chronic levels.

I'd found all sorts of ways to get myself off.

Lying on my stomach with my hands beneath me while I did a slow grind in my fists. On my back, my middle finger up inside of me while I rolled my clitoris between my thumb and index finger. In the tub, me up on my elbows as I scooted my behind across the porcelain until my vagina was directly under the water that rushed out from the spout. That was a hell of a climax, but it left my elbows sore.
And then there was my "toy"--the butterfly vibrator that was wrapped in a silk handkerchief and hidden beneath my Bible in the nightstand drawer.

But three months ago, I'd stopped the self-pleasuring. I mean, it seemed to me that I wasn't staying true to my promise of celibacy.

Sex was sex, whether it involved two people, my hands, the faucet, or the butterfly, right?

So I stopped getting myself off and took up yoga and started running five miles a day.

The good thing that came out of not masturbating was that my body had never looked better. The bad thing was that I was a bit nasty. Well, at least that was what my mother, Peyton Atkins, kept telling me.

"Crystal, you're always blowing your top. You're so snappish. Are you getting some on a regular basis?"

Peyton, in her early sixties, had suddenly shed her conservative views on sex and had become my own personal Dr. Ruth! It seemed as though every conversation we had, my mother found a way to bring up sex.

For instance, I would mention a particular television show, and her response would be something like, "Have you found your other erogenous zones yet?"

It was damn annoying was what it was, not to mention embarrassing. Who the hell wanted to discuss their sexual activities, or lack thereof, with their mother!

She'd even gone so far as to send me a gift certificate for my birthday to White Lotus East. I didn't know what the hell a White Lotus East was, until I went on the website, and oh, my God! I knew my mother had flipped the fuck out! The website had all this information about sacred-spot massages, female orgasms, and performance anxieties!

I was horrified and called my mother up and told her so.

"My sex life is my personal business," I kept reminding her.

"Yes, it is, dear," Peyton would calmly reply, "but it seems to me that the Out to Lunch sign hanging on the front door of your business has been hanging there for three years too long."

I loved my mother, but sometimes I just couldn't stand her.

"Goodbye, Mother!" I would say before slamming the phone down.

She was right, of course. I had been a bit uptight since I'd stopped fucking. But I was determined to stick to my commitment, even though I felt a meltdown coming on. I just hoped it didn't happen when I was anywhere near the male persuasion, because there was no telling what I would do.
The bathwater turned cold, and all of the bubbles were gone by the time I stepped out and wrapped myself in a powder blue oversized bath towel.

I moved from the bathroom into my bedroom and dropped the towel to the floor. In front of my full-length mirror, I took a moment to admire my slim waistline, washboard stomach, and bootylicious bottom.

After I moisturized myself with baby oil and slipped into my favorite oversized T-shirt, I headed out to the kitchen where the rest of my merlot was waiting for me.

Alongside the glass of wine was my day planner. My eyes were drawn to April 22, a date that I'd encircled in red, scrawling beneath it: "Lunch with Karen Shaw." Around the date I'd also drawn daggers dripping with blood.

Karen Shaw, like the rest of us, had grown up in the projects. She was part of our little crew growing up; well, at least until Geneva popped up pregnant and Noah came out of the closet. After those two incidents, Sonia, Karen's mother, decided that we were a bad influence on her little girl and forbade her from being in our company at all.

The poor child spent her last two years of high school with her nose in every book the library had to offer; Sonia was determined to make her little girl a success.

And she had succeeded, to some extent anyway. Karen was accepted to Vassar, where she obtained a degree, and then she went on to marry a Frenchman who just happened to be a doctor and who just happened to be white, and in some odd exchange that we all never quite understood, Karen took her husband's surname, dropped her first name in favor of her maiden name, and now was known as Shaw DeJeuné.

To go along with her change in identity, she got a nose job, got botoxed, lightened her already light skin, shaved off her eyebrows and got some permanently tattooed on, and dyed her hair blond.

We all thought she'd lost her mind. Well, most of us. Chevy didn't see a thing wrong with it.

Karen, I mean Shaw, lives in Los Angeles now. She's quite famous in the voice-over circles; she's the one you hear on the commercials that advertise the drugs of various pharmaceutical companies--well, it's her voice you hear toward the end of the commercial. Come on, you know the one that rattles off the 101 possible side effects that one could experience after using said drug....

Anyway, Shaw and her plastic-surgeon husband were coming to New York to attend a medical conference, and oh, joy, she wanted to get together and have lunch.

The last time she'd come to town, I was stuck spending a whole weekend with her, and it was torture!

First, I vowed never to see that confused child again, and then I thought that might be too harsh, so then I vowed never to do it alone again, which was how Geneva and Chevy...

Présentation de l'éditeur

It’s almost summer in New York City, and the heat is breaking records on the street and between the sheets in Geneva Holliday’s beyond-sexy follow-up to Groove. When Geneva, Crystal, Chevy, and Noah get hot and bothered, they get way more than they ever bargained for…

Geneva is busy caring for her daughter—and robbing the cradle with her son’s business manager. Chevy is working for a diva who requires assistance that’s way too personal for Chevy’s liking. Crystal is in for the surprise of her life when her mom (!) conspires to get Crystal’s engine purring like a kitten again. And Noah hears everyone’s secrets, miles away in London, but with these friends, secrets don’t stay secret for long! After all, what are friends for?

So slip into something slinky and get ready to catch the Fever!

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Broadway Books
• Date d'édition: 2006
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0767921151
• ISBN 13: 9780767921152
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 334
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible